The generation of high voltage, extremely short pulses such as, for example, 500 kilovolt, 40 nanosecond pulses rules out many prior art devices and methods employed in pulsed laser and radar systems. Numerous patents have been issued and papers written on winding and other techniques that have been incorporated in the construction and operation of high voltage pulse transformers directed, for example, to high voltage transformers containing cores wound with high permeability grain orientated nickel-iron alloys, such as Supermendur and Deltamax, developed to reduce pulse transformer size, weight and losses. The principal restriction to the approach of using a single pulse transformer to generate trigger voltages and the like using these materials is their inherent leakage inductance, which precludes attaining pulse use times as short as 10 nanoseconds.
An alternate approach to generating such high voltage pulses having such rise times is the use of the well known Marx generator.
To generate such pulses with a Marx generator, one would have to provide a single, ten section Marx generator which would require a capacitance bank of 8 mf for a 500 kilovolt, 1 kilojoule pulse. The physical aspects of such components, inductance of capacitors and leads, make this approach impractical for applications requiring low weight and small volume. Further, such approaches are capable of delivering only about 10-100 joules with a risetime of at least 100-1000 nanoseconds, which represents a peak power of two to four magnitudes less than that of many present day requirements.
Still further, such approaches are totally incapable of providing the lightweight and reliability of systems required to operate in outer space.